Villa Aurora Events Archive
March 2021
Gewand in drei Akten - Artist Talk
Online
Information
We present an artist talk by Villa Aurora Alumna Stef Heidhues and curator Jan Maruhn as part of the exhibition Gewand in drei Akten at the Mies van der Rohe Haus in Berlin. The exhibition marks the beginning of the series Space - Time - Odyssey, with which the Mies van der Rohe Haus celebrates the 135th birthday of the world-famous architect. It deals with the tense relationship between the architectural and the corporal space in his buildings. Due to COVID-19, the exhibition is currently not open to the public.
In Gewand in drei Akten, two Mies locations in Berlin, Haus Perls and Haus Lemke, and two protagonists of modernism, Mies van der Rohe and Max Pechstein, are set in dialogue. The building owner Martha Lemke also comes to life in a journey through time that leads from an image to a dress. A photograph by Bauhaus student Howard Dearstyne was the basis for the reinterpretation of one of her dresses. The artist Stef Heidhues brings the current time horizon into play: In her work, untitled (white shape) she plays with elements of form and design from modernism. She critically combines them into new arrangements in space.
Partner
A cooperation with Mies van der Rohe Haus
Virtual Villa Aurora Tour
Online
Information
Hear background information and anecdotes of one of the world's most inspiring artists residences for visual artists, composers/musicians, filmmakers, and writers comfortably from home:
Partner
The Villa Aurora Tour is a cooperation between Villa Aurora and USC Libraries
Reading and Discussion with Alexis Landau and Michaela Ullmann
Online
Information
Advance Praise for "Those Who Are Saved"
“Lustrous prose and tight pacing….Those Who Are Saved binds the reader into a story of maternal love, erotic desire, and sweeping romance. I was carried away from beginning to end.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer
“Subtle and skilful….Absolutely haunting.” —Frances Liardet, author of We Must Be Brave
- “Powerful…Landau brilliantly explores the blurred lines between good and evil as the characters wrestle with their own dire decisions and the choices of those they love. Once this magnetic book takes hold, it doesn’t let go.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“A major novel, richy imagined.” —Jewish Book Council
This event will be available for streaming at noon, March 24th on Villa Aurora's YouTube channel.
Participants
Alexis Landau is a graduate of Vassar College and holds an MFA from Emerson College and a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. She was born in Los Angeles and has been fascinated by the European artists and intellectuals who found refuge in “Weimar by the Sea” from an early age. This community is the setting of her second novel “Those Who Are Saved” (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2021), in which Villa Aurora is featured prominently.
Michaela Ullmann is the Exile Studies Librarian and Instruction Coordinator at USC Libraries’ Department of Special Collections. She holds an M.A. in Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology from University of Bonn, and an M.A. in Library and Information Sciences from San Jose State University. As a faculty member of the USC Libraries, Michaela oversees the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, home to Lion Feuchtwanger’s invaluable 30,000 volume rare book collection, as well as papers by German-speaking intellectuals and artists who fled Nazi Germany and came to Los Angeles.
Co-editor: Lion Feuchtwanger. Ein möglichst intensives Leben. Die Tagebücher. Berlin, 2018; The Devil in France: My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940. Los Angeles 2010; Against the Eternal Yesterday: Essays Commemorating the Legacy of Lion Feuchtwanger. Los Angeles 2009.
Partner
A collaboration with University of Southern California Libraries and Penguin Random House
